Flowers are beautiful. It does sound kind of stupid to say just that, right? But if you think about it, they have to be, it's their entire evolutionary purpose through sight and smell. They're designed to draw animals to them to pollinate the $5 billion a year. US floral industry is just one testament to the incredible success that plants have had on attracting us to them. But flowering is just one part of plant life cycle.
And the more I garden, the more I'm really attracted to ways to celebrate the entirety of a plant's life. From the seed it comes from to the seed it creates, and finding out that 80% of flowers sold in the US are grown overseas and shipped in. I'm also really drawn to local and sustainable options. That's why I was so excited to talk to Mackenzie of Deadhead Floral. I found her on Instagram.
She is a garden designer and a florist here in Portland, and she invited me to go meet her in her garden where she grows everything that she works with. She thinks about flowers and plants in a lot of different ways that I found fascinating and I think you will too. So come. Let's get outside.
Cool. Are we, is it on? Yeah. Is it going? We're going. I turned it on. Oh, well. Hello, I'm Mackenzie. This is Pepsi, my little chihuahua. Uh, we're all of deadhead floral. We're deadhead floral on Instagram. Yes. You can find us selling bouquets and wreaths. Support the nursery. Or you can DM me. And how did all of that start?
Um, well at work at Portland Nursery, my day job, we like have a wreath making thing in Christmas time and I was just like instantly addicted to making wreaths and it just kind of grew from there.
And so you grow a lot of the stuff that you work with, right? Yeah.
Grow or scavenge or, I'm gifted. That's awesome.
why did you choose to pursue it in that way rather than buying stuff?
Yeah. Well, it's a lot or cheaper to make it yourself. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. You have to, um, pay for like a yearly pass to go to the flower market. And I'm like pretty small scale, so it wasn't really worth it for me to like pay a hundred dollars a year pass. Yeah. And, uh, I like growing stuff. Yeah.
I was wondering, do you get inspiration from growing things, um, for like the bouquets that you make?
Yeah. Well, I think a lot of my inspo is like, weeds? Yeah. Like roadside weeds, like the bulk of most of them is honestly just like weeds growing in my neighbor's strip. Really? Yeah. So I was like, wow, I can like, just make stuff out of like free roadside trash. Yeah. And then just started growing some of the like more focal flowers.
And do you, like, do you intentionally grow weeds as well in your garden? I'll
leave them be, yeah. Which one? I mean, I'll weed a little bit, but point some out to me. Are there any like, that's some Queen Anne's lace over here. Oh
yeah. Oh, here's one.
Oh yeah. And it's such a cute little like
Yeah. Like fist almost. Yeah. Like after It is. So I'm looking at the sort of the spent head of the flower, right?
Yeah. They're um, they're all over the place, but they're that little like, oh, here's a little flower, that little white lacy Yeah. Kind
of thing. And they look cool when they curl up and they kind of like get these little like
sponge balls. Yeah.
What's the inspiration for the name of your,
like what made you choose that name? Oh yeah. Well I was um, at the nursery just like deadheading the marigold's. Deadheading is like when you pinch off the spent blossom. Mm-hmm. And I was like, oh my God. Deadhead floor. Yeah, And then like in the very beginning I was like, and I'm gonna name every like, type of bouquet. Like, it's gonna be a pun. It's gonna be like I need a marigold instead of miracle. Oh yeah. Or like, yeah, China cat sunflower.
But like I didn't really wanna commit to that aesthetic so much. Yeah. So, I'm trying to not totally be associated with like, tie-dye, hippie dancing bears. I feel you. And more just like, yeah. When you clip it, it's called
deadheading, like. Right. I mean, one of the things I love from looking at your stuff on Instagram and then even like, you know, uh, being a customer myself, is that I think what it feels like to me is that you're paying attention to the full lifespan. Oh yeah. Of the things that you're including, whether they're your bouquets or your wreaths, it's like you're kind of celebrating the entire life of the flower or the plant.
Yeah. And that's like different areas of the plant or different, like parts of it, but also kind of like when it's young versus what it looks like when it, the flower's dying. Yeah. And it feels like you're kind of looking at it more holistically. Do you think about that or is that just kind of intuitive?
Um, well this is a, like very good example. The plant that we're next to right now, the scbi little like, Buds on this are so cute. Yeah. But they look totally different than the seed pods. Right. And the like flowers. Gorgeous. But like I'm more attracted to the seed pod and I couldn't fully explain why. Mm-hmm. I think something about seed pods is like harvest, like abundance. Yeah. Feeling to me, I like to put um, fruits in stuff.
Like I would love to clip that little pepper branch and put that in something. Oh yeah. And then hopefully someone would like eat the pepper when they're done. when the things spent. Yeah. These ta tea branches over here like would look really gorgeous in an
arrangement. Yeah. With the, cuz it's kind of trans, the ombre from like the purple at the base of the stem sort of to where it gets to almost the char trussie green at the
end. Yeah. Yeah. This is a purple one. And you can like, yes. Beautiful. See the progression, you've got buds on it and like fruit all in the same branch. Yeah. Circle of life.
So tell us about your garden in general, sort of like and where we are and how you sort of set up this space that is Yeah. So lovely to be in.
Well, it's our first year in the garden. When we moved in, this was just like, it's kind of got a little foundation around it. I think maybe this used to be a giant structure.
Oh. And it was torn down. I'm just noticing that. Yeah.
Yeah. There's like this little cement wall.
That's cool. You can seen us. Yeah. It's almost like, it's like being in the remains of like an Irish farmhouse or
something. Yeah. Yeah. When we, um, saw that this house was for sale, we like drove past it and like got into the backyard when no one was home and I saw this and I was like, okay. Yeah, it like screams. I need to be a little out your
garden. And what's your kind of, how did you approach deciding what goes where and what you're including? Yeah. I'm seeing a mix of flowers that you probably use in your work, but then also. tomatoes. We were just talking about tomatillos. We've
got some, well, I live here with, with my boyfriend and he definitely wants to grow vegetables. Okay. So we were, we had to have
this food. So you guys guys share the space? Yeah. Yeah. Does he let you scavenge from the food producing stuff for some of your projects?
Oh yeah. He's not like pissed that I can sell the tomatoes or something. Yeah. It works out well. And he gets to water it half of the time too, so That's nice. Yeah.
What is this? Just the wild fennel. Um, that's bronze.
Fennel. Okay. Oh, also, yeah. A lot, a lot of the stuff's here just because it was free. Yeah. So it's a little chaotic. It's like if I was doing someone's yard, I would not do it like the way I did it or not have like, just one of like five different things. But yeah, it's just like constantly being edited. I
the thing that you're saying, you wouldn't plan a garden like this for somebody else. Yeah. Oh yeah. But to me it does kind of feel like it's less like a garden for a presentation and a little bit more like it's a paint palette. Yeah. You know what I mean? Like there's like, you have all these different tools and all these different ingredients everywhere and it has that feeling of sort of like an artist's collection of tools or paint or something
like that. Thank you. Sounds so romantic.
like you're pulling so many different sources of inspiration from it and you're using it. You're clearly like working from all this stuff. Yeah.
This is on here. The like production garden has like a different vibe than that. Like five foot patch right there is the only part of the yard that I think is done. Yeah. Like where those silver bushes are Uhhuh and that's like, we're like repeating the same plant like over and over and over again. We're taking it all the way down. Mm-hmm. we've got like steps going up in here. It's just like, ah. Yeah, totally.
Yeah. That's the thing about having to cut flower garden is you also cut all the flowers like as soon as they're buds, so you don't really have like a beautiful
flower garden. Yeah. how do you pick the flowers that you've planted for your sort of like focal
flowers? Yeah. I think you need like a bunch of different shapes. You need like kind of a spike shaped thing. Kind of a flat surface thing. Like a daisy or like a yaro. Mm-hmm. You need like at least three different shapes.
Okay. That makes sense. I've never thought of it that way, but
yeah. You need something that like, is kind of triangular spike shaped to like kind of take Yeah. Your eye like out of the arrangement. Uhhuh. and not just foliage. You need like color at the tips. Yeah. Otherwise you're just looking at like a flower in the middle and then like some foliage around the side. Uhhuh,
So we're going to, you, you said you actually have to pull some stuff for an arrangement. Yeah.
Today, right? Well, all the straw flowers also like begging to get cut right now. You wanna cut them a little bit? before they're fully open, cuz they'll continue to open as you dry them. Just like the clean Annesley you I was talking about. Ah-huh. So you can see here they're starting,
oh these are gorgeous. These just open, really dense, sort of like roses and fusia colored and they have the little pointy flowers
kind and they make this great sound.
Oh, I love that. And that's, that's not dry, that's just
what it does all the time. No, they just come out like this. That's cool. So you still have to dry 'em or hang 'em to dry cuz the stem gets really floy. Yeah. They actually take a really long time for the stem to fully dry. Yeah. Otherwise you have it and it's just like fully Yeah, yeah. Yeah. Flopped over. Okay. I lost my pruners, but probably just like, oh yeah, that works.
So these are, you're collecting these for a, you're gonna dry these
mm-hmm. Yeah. For a, I'll hang these up to dry and it might take like a week. Or so for them to fully dry. But I've got some already that have been dried
in the house. Yeah. And is this one that you're just like, oh, I have a bunch of stuff that needs to get used somehow? Or is this, are you working from a specific brief or a request?
Yeah. Well, I've got to do some fall bouquets and wreaths for the Portland nursery round division. Yep. I brought stuff last week, but fortunately they're almost sold out already. Nice.
That's good. So how do you think about fall? Like what, when you think about doing fall bouquets, what are the types of things you like to do?
Um, sunflowers are really cute. They dry really well. We've got some growing over there.
We can Oh yeah, those are gorgeous. They have like the, rather than that really sunny yellow, they're a little bit more like butter cream. Yeah.
That's Italian white, but it's not very white.
No, it's
really a pretty color. Yeah. The package was like much. lighter than that. Oh yeah. But I still like the buttercream quite a bit. Mm-hmm. Here's, this is broom corn here. So you like, this is what you would make a broom out of. Oh, no way. Yeah. You would take a whole bunch of these and like get the seeds off of them and then tie 'em together somehow. Wow. I,
yeah. I guess. I don't think I'm gonna make a broom, but. Right. Do you use these in your arrangements as well? Mm-hmm.
Yeah. These, you don't really need to dry at all. They stay dirty. They're ready to go. They're
gorgeous. Yeah. I love seeds. Yeah. And how do you. In working with things that have seeds, do you have to be careful about sort of like messiness? Like how do
you Yeah. How do you think about that? Yeah, I, um, we'll hang them to dry and usually once they're fully dry they'll drop all of the seeds left. I'll like shake it. Oh, okay. Somewhere, but I can clean up so people aren't taking something home that is just gonna drop a bunch of stuff all over their house. Uhhuh, and weeds in their yard.
But it's interesting, like everything that I look at, I can see that you've been using it. You know what I mean? I can see
where all these stems. Yeah. Well the more you cut it, the more they grow, right? Totally. Yeah. They recommend you like pinch back your cut flowers when they're still little babies take 'em down like halfway Uhhuh and they'll grow back way bushier and you get a lot more production that way.
Is there a season to do that or you just
do that whenever, I mean, just when they're young. Spring. Yeah. Springtime Pinch your daes pinch your cosmos
zenia. So you're gonna use these, uh, this like broom str broom straw. Is it broom corn? Broom corn. Is that gonna go in the same arrangement as the Yeah.
I love, well those are all pink and this broom corn turns this nice red color as it gets mature. Oh, I love broom corn. Cuz it starts off green. Yeah. And then fades to red as it gets older.
Yeah. The seeds have a, like a more reddy sort of reddish brown
color. Yeah. And then there's the seashells behind you, which has got these two flowers. Yeah. And I didn't really love the hot purple, so
it just wasn't, uh, aesthetically wasn't for you. Yeah.
It's like kind of a Barney purple color Uhhuh, And I like things that have sort of multiple tones in them. Yeah. It's much easier to make them look good with other things. Mm-hmm. rather than like a clear, like this purple here is very clear. But then the purple and the dahlias over there has got like a lot of different tones in it. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But this is just too cute. I just like let it grow, but I'm not really gonna design with it, but it still makes me very happy.
Yeah. Zayas are, to me, give me like very sort of like eighties. Yeah. Like really just sort of like bubble gum, uncomplicated you
know? Yeah, very much so. And I think they still look cool, like all together in an arrangement like of only clear colors, but mm-hmm. that's not really the aesthetic. All right, what else should we grab? This is some
pretty cute, do you work with the The fig? ever. I would
love to put fig branches in an arrangement. Yeah. Cause these little purple fruits are so cute. Right. But he's just too young for me
to really cut him. Yeah. Oh yeah. So we got some more dead Queen
Anne's lace. Yeah. And we'll do the little shaky trick where we Oh, I see. Just shake off the seeds. Yeah. Wow. That one had a lot.
My mom calls Queen Anne's lace, wild carrot. Oh yeah. But I don't quite know why. Right. Like their roots aren't, they don't actually have carrot
roots. Well, they have, um, carrot flowers. Oh, okay. So carrots, parsley. Yeah. This thing, hemlock cow, parsley. They all have, um, I think it's called an, um, bell where all of the flowers come from. The pets originate at one central point and then they come out and make a flat top. Yeah. Yaro has that, but it's called a korum and it makes the flat top, but the like point of origin is like staggered. Yeah. Learned that in
botany school. All right. Are you taking botany school?
I have a BS in evolutionary biology. Nice. And now I just like pick flowers.
How does that feel? I was actually curious what the journey is to becoming a, small business owning florist. How did you get started?
I don't know. It just happened like so in so many tiny little steps. Mm-hmm. having my own yard has been kind of huge. Yeah. Cause I can make a bunch of stuff. Totally. Before I could only make like a wreath a month basically with what I was able to grow. But now it's really popped off. Yeah. Um, yeah, I just really did not wanna go to grad school. school size. I hear you. I couldn't look at a computer for any longer. Yeah. Yeah. I um, I worked in a lab right out of college. Oh, okay.
Actually, like at ninth. Oh wow. Looking at like dog poop samples. Whoa. For like an emergency vet kind of thing. Oh my gosh. And the work actually wasn't so bad. You. Listen to podcasts all day, but it was at night and I think that that is so bad for you. Yeah. If anyone's ever considering working at night, do not. Yeah. It will kill you. And then I quit that and worked at the nursery and then I've just kind of like stayed doing that ever since. Meet a lot of people there who need gardeners.
So I was just like, sure. Yeah, I'll be your gardener. That's cool. Yeah, very organic. Haven't really like decided to do anything. Just been like, well, I'll try it. This looks pretty cute. Yeah. Like just randomly grass. What is this? Uh, is this part of the corn straw? It's part of the corn, yeah. I think the, it's a nice difference in texture cuz this is all very airy. Yeah. And wild. And then the like thick corn leaf gives you that
contrast. Let's get some
Russian
sage here. That, oh yeah. Really? Well. I have some, I've been growing some Russian sage. It smells so good. Yeah. Does the, when you dry it, these kind of lose their color though. They
turn a little gray, but they're still a really nice fuzzy texture. Right. And here it's the same thing with lavender, but the little flower. Mm-hmm. will probably dry up and fall out, but the little like, sipple will stay Right.
The little like fuzzy sort of like,
yeah bud. What's that called? The calyx? Yeah. Your calyx and Corolla Astros here Ath ready to go.
Oh, this looks amazing. It looks like a smell it spice shape. Yeah. Yeah. It almost looks like something you'd hang in like a parakeet cage. Oh,
Yeah. I bet they'd love it. I think the seeds are edible. It's really cute. Looking at the little, I think they're Finch is, um, eat the Cosmo seeds. Oh yeah. It's so cute.
Do they get it right from the flower?
Yeah, they'll like land on the flower and then pick the seeds out of the little spit flower. That's adorable. It's so cute. I could just cry. Yeah,
that's
really cute. Oh my God. Look at Pepsi. She's
so cute. Yeah. She looks like she is found the right spot. Mm-hmm. she can watch what's going on and still enjoy the sunshine. Little Chihuahua girl needs the sunshine. Yeah. Those ears are collecting every little, yeah, like every sun beam. I was curious to talk to you also about kind of like this concept of winter interest mm-hmm. How do you, if, if you had to describe what winter interest means, like what it like, it's just basically like what stuff looks like once.
Yeah. It's dead. Yeah. Is it evergreen? Some stuff. Even flowers in the winter, so.
Oh yeah. Like you should put a little bit of
that. I love hella bores. Yeah. For that Hellebores for sure. Chael's flower in the winter. Heather Heather's amazing. Mm mm-hmm red Twig dogwoods. Yeah. What has interesting sticks like a contorted Filbert has, it's probably the barks the most interesting thing about it. Great. Myrtles have gorgeous bark. Oh yeah. When they're old. These are just babies though. They haven't quite shed their bark yet.
it feels to me like that's something you think about almost in terms of how you create your bouquets and stuff like that because you're thinking about the full lifespan of the plant. Yeah. But I don't know, do you think about that when you're gardening as well?
Um, yeah, definitely. Back here it's mostly evergreen stuff. Uhhuh, And eventually it's all gonna get really big. Cause I really want a lot of privacy. Yeah. I don't want anyone to perceive me in my backyard. I wanna be completely hidden. Yeah. So all of this stuff is evergreen. Yeah.
That is
neat.
And so for you, winter interest interest is mostly about what types of stuff are gonna stay evergreen? Yeah.
Or um, seed pods. If you don't cut 'em down like the eha, I'm not gonna cut anymore cuz of the seed pods are really cute. Mm-hmm. major garden design inspo. It's like swaths of grass and perennials. But in the wintertime it looks probably its best cuz all the grass gets like frosty. Mm-hmm. and all the seed pods are like poking up through the frosty grass. Yeah. And I want that vibe here. Yeah. When I'm looking at my window, right?
Yeah. Yeah. For winter interest, it's also like, what do you see from your house? Okay. Because if it's like an area you only hang out in the summertime, oh. Doesn't really matter if you have winter interest, but if it's your review from your house Yeah. You're gonna wanna look at something.
That's a good point. Like you, you don't need to plant your like garden patio. Yeah. If that's like where you entertained in the summer. Mm-hmm. It's just like what you see from your
kitchen. Yeah. What are you looking at when you're like sipping your coffee? Mm-hmm. on a crispy morning. Yeah. And that would be this area which everything but the lilies. I should still be here.
So maybe like, all right. If you were gonna give like a quick, like easiest things to keep in mind if you're like trying to put together like a bouquet. Mm-hmm. the first thing you mentioned was having a few different
shapes. Yeah. Yeah. Have a, like three different shapes going on. And if you're not like super into color theory just yet, like keeping it maybe monotone, like having just like different shades of pink. Mm-hmm. and then you can't really like, have anything that clashes
too bad. Yeah.
but I guess just having like everything be loose and airy. Uhhuh is my vibe anyways. My aesthetic. Yeah. But you can kind of just like take what you've grabbed and like tap it on the bottom a little bit and it spreads everything out really nicely. Yeah. When you have a nice, yeah, that actually
normal looking, it's kind of crazy. Like you just kind of like tapping the bottom of the, it's really changed how you just have a collection of like four things you clipped and now it suddenly looks like a little piece of
art. Oh, thank you. Yeah. Be tied a beautiful bow around it. Right. And wrapped it in paper. Yeah. That's money
Boom. So if people are in Portland, they should be looking you up please. on
deadhead, uh, floral on Instagram, right? Yeah, that's my handle. Just deadhead, floral, no funny spelling or anything. Yeah. And then, um, my stuff stocked typically at both Portland Nursery locations on Stark in division. I try to bring stuff weekly, but Amazing. Rather you just DM me. Yeah. Perfect. No,
middle man. Easy. Awesome. Well, thank you so much for letting us spend some time in your garden and in your inspiration. Thank you
for coming and for visiting Pep.
Yeah. She did a great job of guiding us around. You a good girl?
Yeah. Can you make a little noise? Does she, if I jostled her? Let's see. She'll make a cute little piggy sound. Come on. now. She's not gonna do it. when she's excited. She like sneezes. It's
really cute. I have a cat who has really bad allergies, uh, and it's just so cute to hear her like walking around. Just be like, snuffling and sneezing. Like, That was Mackenzie of Deadhead, floral, and her chief sunbathing, officer Pepsi. Wanted to thank them both so much for inviting us to their garden. They're on Instagram at Deadhead Floral, and they're not the only ones. You can find us at Fresh Clippings and see what we're up to in the. Thank you for joining us on Plant Time for Clippings.
This is Topfer Burns.